The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Good evening. I'm Elizabeth Farnsworth. Jim Lehrer is on vacation. On the NewsHour tonight a back-to-class debate over school choice, a fresh look at Georgia O'Keeffe, truth or consequences on the Internet, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay on late summer pleasures. It all follows our summary of the news this Thursday. NEWS SUMMARY

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Two U.S. peacekeepers were injured in Bosnia today by Serbian protesters throwing rocks and fire bombs. The peacekeepers' part of the U.S. NATO contingent where evacuating 58 unarmed United Nations police observers who were mobbed by feuding Serb factions in the Northwestern town of Brcko. The international police force was there to help officers loyal to Serbian President Biljana Plavsic gain control of the Brcko police station. Hundreds of supporters of rival Serb nationalist Radovan Karadzic surrounded the UN personnel. A NATO spokesman briefed reporters on the confrontation. NATO SPOKESMAN: We had SFOR soldiers positioned in places to observe the police station. There was a large form--a large that formed a few hours ago. There were rocks and two-by-fours thrown. One of our soldiers was hit in the eye and did damage to the eye, possibly a fractured eye socket, possible loss of eyesight. We've evaluated him. We've had him evacuated.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: In Martha's Vineyard, where President Clinton is vacationing, a White House spokesman said the United States will not tolerate attacks on peacekeeping troops in Bosnia. A Commerce Department report showed today the U.S. economy was stronger this spring than earlier believed. The department reported the Gross Domestic Product grew at a 3.6 percent annual rate in the April-June quarter, an upward revision from the 2.2 percent figure announced last month. The GDP is the sum of all goods and services produced within the United States. The son of the late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown pleaded guilty today to an election law violation. Thirty-two-year-old Michael Brown appeared at a hearing at U.S. District Court in Washington. He admitted to making $4,000 in illegal contributions to the 1994 reelection campaign of Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. In exchange for Brown's plea Justice Department prosecutors agreed not to seek a prison sentence. In Boston today Massachusetts Congressman Joseph Kennedy said he would not run for governor of his home state. He said he had wanted to campaign on issues such as health care, jobs, and education.

REP. JOSEPH KENNEDY, [D] Massachusetts: But in recent weeks I've come to the conclusion reluctantly that if I am a candidate for governor next year, the focus will not be on those issues. The race will focus on personal and family questions. It's not fair to my family; it's not fair to the people of Massachusetts; and it's not the right thing to do. Therefore, I've decided not to be a candidate for governor in 1998.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The annulment of Joe Kennedy's first marriage and his brother's relationship with the family babysitter have been the subjects of recent negative publicity. Kennedy said he would seek re-election for a seventh term from his congressional district in Boston and Cambridge. In San Francisco, thousands marched across the Golden Gate Bridge today, led by the city's mayor, Willie Brown, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. They were protesting the California law known as Proposition 209, which took effect today. It makes it illegal to use race or gender as an official criterion in state hiring, contracting, or school admissions. Jackson spoke to reporters before the march.

REV. JESSE JACKSON, President, PUSH/Rainbow Coalition: Today, when Prop 209 kicks in, it represents a radical resegregation, a radical loss from opportunities for women and people of color. Women will have fewer contracts and fewer jobs and fewer promotions. This virus could hurt us drastically.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: California voters approved the measure in last year's elections but implementing it has been delayed by court challenges. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to a school choice debate, a fresh look at Georgia O'Keeffe, truth or consequences in cyberspace, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay. FOCUS - SCHOOL CHOICE

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Margaret Warner has the debate over school choice.

MARGARET WARNER: It's back to school time for millions of American children. And for many that means returning to public school systems that are failing to produce well-educated students. One possible fix, long favored by conservatives, is to give low income parents tuition vouchers so they can send their children to private schools. Now the idea seems to be gaining broader support. A national Gallup poll released this week showed the public now evenly split, 49 to 48 percent, on providing vouchers to cover tuition at any public, private, or church-related school. In past years, a majority opposed the idea. Another poll this summer showed that support for vouchers among black Americans has jumped, from virtually even last year to 57-38 in favor this year. About 20 states are considering setting up some kind of school choice program. But only Wisconsin, Ohio, and Vermont have actually instituted any kind of publicly-funded vouchers. The oldest and largest plan is Milwaukee's. Two years ago, the Wisconsin legislature tried to expand that program to include religious schools. But last Friday a state appeals court ruled that move was unconstitutional. To debate the merits and prospects of school choice, we have two advocates: Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson, a Republican; and Democratic Congressman Floyd Flake of New York, a co-sponsor of legislation to set up a pilot voucher program in the District of Columbia; and two opponents: Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union; and Marshall Smith Acting Deputy Secretary of Education in the Clinton administration.

MARGARET WARNER: Congressman Flake, you surprised a lot of people by coming out in support of vouchers. Why? Why do you support them? REP. FLOYD FLAKE, [D] New York: I support vouchers I--in addition to being in Congress- -I happen to pastor a church and a community that is severely impacted by the fact that many of the young people in that community are not getting the kind of education that makes them competitive in the global context, or brings them to a point where even if they get a degree, they're dysfunctional. And so it is my firm belief that as long as public education does not do the job, there must be some competition and there must be some opportunity for alternatives for those parents whose children are locked into a system from which they cannot escape, or which they are guaranteed that they are going to be able to get the kind of education they need in order to survive in this society.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, you've broken ranks with not only a lot of the African- American leadership in this country--the NAACP still opposes vouchers, so does the Congressional Black Caucus--but also with your own Democratic Party, your own President. How does that make you feel? Why do you think that is?

REP. FLOYD FLAKE: Well, I think that if you look at the history of America, there's always had to be someone to kind of step out and say it's time for a change. Were that not the case. Brown Vs. Board of Education would not have happened in '54. Dr. Martin Luther King and others would not have been able to bring about necessary change. I think as we analyze what has happened in education over the last twenty-five or thirty years, we realize that the model that we have is not working as effectively as it ought be, and there are a lot of our young people who are just being left behind with nowhere to go, but to jail, because they've already been put in a position where they can't compete in this society.

MARGARET WARNER: Bob Chase, what do you and your fellow teachers say or your teachers union members say to Congressman Flake when he says that the system is just totally failing, at least his community and many--

BOB CHASE, National Education Association: First of all, I don't think it's accurate to say that the system is totally failing. Just recently, we had more test results that have been announced- -either SAT tests, or ACT tests, the NAPE test, the TIMS test earlier this year--where, in fact, we are seeing improvements coming now in public education. I think this is the result of the work that's been done over the last few years in reforming and restructuring and putting into place new things that are necessary to make sure that we meet the needs of our students. Vouchers are not a fix as far as public education or the education of our children are concerned. What it really is, is abandoning public education and abandoning many students who will not be allowed to go on to schools that vouchers will be used to--for students to go in to. I think it's bad public policy. The area of accountability will be very, very minimal as it relates to vouchers. That's one of the things that those who are--many of those who pushing vouchers want little or no accountability. And I think that it is not, in effect, going to be a hazardous thing in the long run, improving education for all of the students in our country.

MARGARET WARNER: Congressman, you want to respond to that?

REP. FLOYD FLAKE: Sure. I think the problem is that when you look at what is happening in reality, though public education is probably improving, it is not improving significantly enough or fast enough in these urban communities where these young people know that they do not have an opportunity to be able to compete with young people from the suburbs and from other places, in particular. I think that what has happened is that--just like the automobile industry--when it had a monopoly, it produced a product that did not hold up well. I think what is happening--and I'm not against public education--I think it ought to survive--I just think it ought to do a better job. And if it cannot, then there ought to be an alternative that takes a portion of that market share. He is right, that vouchers won't end the whole problem or solve the whole issue, but at least it will let them know that there are alternative institutions and African-American parents on the whole, over 62 percent, are saying, we need an alternative; we're tired of our children going into this system and our tax dollars not educating our children.

MARGARET WARNER: Isn't he right, Deputy Secretary Smith, that a majority of African- American parents now say they want it, and whatever improvement is happening in the schools isn't coming fast enough, at least for inner-city students?

MARSHALL SMITH, Acting Deputy Secretary of Education: There's no question. There's a deep, deep problem in the inner-city schools, or in many inner-city schools, not all. And I think that's partly what Bob Chase was just saying; that there are many, many, many, many, many places where you have very effective urban schools. You have effective urban schools in District 2 in New York, District 4, Philadelphia, San Francisco's had test scores moving up five years in a row. So there's no question but that one can move urban centers and what it takes is not a new panacea and takes is not saying, let's have private school choice without accountability, as Bob said. What it really takes is willpower. It takes strong school boards. It takes good principals. It takes hard work for the public schools. The same poll that you've just been citing said right at the very beginning that a large majority of the American public do not want to forsake the public school system; they want to change the public school system. They want to reform it.

MARGARET WARNER: But do you feel that having even a small voucher program means forsaking the public schools?

MARSHALL SMITH: Oh, I think it distracts attention. It politicizes. It leads to this kind of a discussion, rather than a discussion about how to put computers in classrooms, about how to improve teaching in learning. It also moves our discussion away from the role the public schools have played for a century in our country. It's public schools where desegregation began to move in this country in the South and benefitted millions and millions of white and black children. It's public education which has brought this country to the point where it is the longest lasting democracy in an incredibly diverse country. But we have the strongest economy. It goes to public schoolchildren. Only 11 percent of our children go to private schools. It's a figure that very few people know.

MARGARET WARNER: We are here in a way to discuss that, so let me ask Gov. Thompson, who has the most experience with this. What is really the track record now? In the Milwaukee schools we've had this program for seven years. Is it--have the kids who've gotten-- received vouchers done better--have they benefitted? GOV. TOMMY THOMPSON, [R] Wisconsin: Absolutely, without any doubt whatsoever. And the truth of the matter is that I sort of chuckle every time that I debate this issue. The question is, is always is that you want to abandon public schools. In Wisconsin, we've put an additional $1.2 billion into our public schools but at the same time we want to allow those poor African-American children, minority children in the city of Milwaukee to have another choice. 50 percent of the students are not graduating from high school in the public school setting. But in the private school setting over 80 percent are. That is an indication. We're seeing more parental involvement. That is a positive thing. When you get parents involved, you're going to have an increased improvement of education for your children. Mesmer Private School in Milwaukee has a 98 percent graduation rate, 98 percent. And the vast majority of those minority students are going on to college. That's what we want to accomplish. Choice is not the panacea, but it is one of those things that we have to try. It does increase accountability because it's competition. And it allows the public schools to get better, as well as the private schools. That's why we're in this. We're trying to make all of our schools better. We're not trying to abandon one system in deference to the other. We're trying to make all schools better for children, especially minority children.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. How do you answer those figures, those graduation rates and so on?

BOB CHASE: First of all, in all due respect to Gov. Thompson, I want to indicate that just each year that the voucher program has been in place in Milwaukee, approximately 25 percent have left the program each year. That's not an enormously high percentage by any stretch of the imagination.

GOV. TOMMY THOMPSON: But--

BOB CHASE:Excuse me, Governor. I didn't interrupt you.

MARGARET WARNER: Let him answer, and then I'll get back to you.

BOB CHASE:In addition to that, there have been in a relatively few number of schools who have taken part in the voucher program, there have been several of those schools that have closed down in mid-year. There have been problems with them. And as far as saying that all students are doing better, we can have the normal discussion of doing studies if we want, but there is no empirical that clearly shows, without any doubt, that students who are going to the voucher schools in Milwaukee are doing better. We can show one study that says no; one study that says yes; and I don't think anybody wants to get involved in doing studies. But there's no definite empirical data that can show that.

MARGARET WARNER: Governor, can you respond without getting into dueling studies?

GOV. TOMMY THOMPSON: Well, absolutely. I can. Mesmer High School is a private school. It's a choice school. 98 percent of the students in Mesmer last year graduated from high school. 90 percent--89 to 91 percent are going on to college this fall. That, to me, is a statistic that nobody can deny.

MARGARET WARNER: All right.

GOV. TOMMY THOMPSON: And that's true all over.

MARGARET WARNER: But respond to the question that the reason those statistics are so good is because essentially all the failures--the kids who didn't make it, the schools that didn't make it--kind of dropped out.

GOV. TOMMY THOMPSON: Well, that is absolutely not true. We're finding that a lot of poor children and children that are not doing good in public schools are the ones that are dropping out and going into the private schools because they're not getting the proper education. And we're finding that they have found a niche. And when they found that niche in the private school setting, they've done better. And I think it's much--you know--I think it's wonderful that we can show that in our private school setting over 80 percent on average in all the private schools are graduating from high school when in the public school setting only 50 percent are. That's a statistic that nobody can argue with.

MARGARET WARNER: Sec. Smith wants to get in here.

MARSHALL SMITH: Well, there's--we agree on the problem. We agree that there's a major problem in Milwaukee and many other places. We disagree on the strategy. There are public school strategies, as you know, Governor--charter schools, other kinds of public school strategies--

GOV. TOMMY THOMPSON: Absolutely.

MARSHALL SMITH: --that work just as well as private school strategies.

MARGARET WARNER: Governor, let him finish, and then I want to go to the Congressman actually, but go ahead.

MARSHALL SMITH: We don't have to get into a situation where we abandon public schools, where we set up contentious arguments of this sort. We can set up strategies in the inner cities, where we have public school choice through charter schools, or we have choice systems, Cambridge, Montclair, a variety of other choice systems, where everybody has choice. We can set it up in such a way that it's fair, where parents have information about it, where there is transportation and so on, and where everybody--everybody--

MARGARET WARNER: Are any of these happening now?

MARSHALL SMITH: Yes. All over the country there are places like this.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Congressman, let me ask you to answer the question that both these opponents--and weigh in on anything else you want--but their point is, what about the kids left behind, what about the public school system left behind, what impact does vouchers have on them?

REP. FLOYD FLAKE: Well, I think that what those who are on the opposite side of this debate don't understand is that those children are already left behind. What you would bring out of that system in terms of those who would receive vouchers would not be a significant number, but it would be a number of those who would otherwise not have an opportunity for a better education. Those schools--at the moment that those communities unfortunately integrated, white flight took the best of the young people out. And right now, in my community, any child who is at the top of their class can get out of their community, go to some of the best schools on the outside of the community, so the worst kids are still left in the community. The bottom line is desegregation as we anticipated it would work has not worked because the buses only went one way, and so many of the minority students have already been left behind. My argument is we need a means by which we give some hope to those persons who are left behind, give them a chance and an opportunity to be as competitive as anyone else. And what I find interesting, most of the people when I get into these debates, they're sending their kids to private schools, and they're telling everybody else, no, your kids have to stay in those systems. My kids even went to private schools. But the reality is we've got to deal with the fact that here are some people who can't afford it. I have a school. If my parents had a $1300 voucher, which my community would not be eligible for, but if they had that, it's just a bridge. It is not all the tuition, but it does say--and I see parents come, grandparents, uncles, aunts, friends, who want to make sure that that child gets a good education, and they invest in that childhood. When they invest in their child, they come to PTA meetings, they help with the homework, they do everything they can to make sure that that child can survive.

MARGARET WARNER: And why wouldn't--

REP. FLOYD FLAKE: I met with 30 educators who work in the public system. They say it needs to be changed because it's too democratic, and they cannot do the things that they've been trained to do.

MARGARET WARNER: You mean so--I wanted to ask you--why are the parents not involved in the public school systems?

REP. FLOYD FLAKE: They're not involved in public school because there's not an incentive. Most private schools require young people to have a certain amount of homework every night that is prepared, has to be done by the next day. It's almost impossible for a parent not to participate in that child's education, No. 1. No. 2, in too many public schools the standards have been lowered. And rather than challenging the young people to reach the standard, they have allowed the young people to make a determination that they can't reach the standard, so that in local preventives it's no longer a part of the process sadly, and, therefore, the teachers do not see them as an extension of themselves, of their families, and do not challenge them to raise themselves to standards that will allow them to be competitive.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. In the minute we have left let me let Bob Chase respond on behalf of the schools and the teachers on that point.

BOB CHASE: Two points I'd like to make. First of all, unlike maybe some of Rep. Flake's other opponents on this issue, my daughters did attend public school, both of them. As a matter of fact, my second daughter attended public school here in Washington, D.C., and received a very good education. And I'm very pleased with that. Let me also indicate that we too--the NEA--the AFT--teachers around this country--

MARGARET WARNER: The other teachers--

BOB CHASE: That's right--are fighting very hard for high standards, for improvements in education, and we are making good progress and will continue to make good progress. We are firmly convinced that vouchers are not the answer. As a matter of fact, the public has said over and over again on four different times when they've had the real polls--and that's the opportunity to go to the polls and vote--and four states across this country since 1992--on the basis of two to one--they have said, no.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. And, gentlemen, I'm sorry, but we have to leave it there. Thank you all very much.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Still to come on the NewsHour Georgia O'Keeffe, law and the Internet, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay. FOCUS - AN INDEPENDENT LIFE

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Now, the life and work of painter Georgia O'Keeffe. Paul Solman of WGBH-Boston has that story.

PAUL SOLMAN: In Santa Fe, New Mexico, this summer a very public event: A new museum has opened devoted to America's endlessly popular and famously female artist Georgia O'Keeffe, featuring her signature flowers, her skulls and bones, her visions of the American Southwest. Meanwhile, at New York's Metropolitan Museum, an intimate look at the woman, herself, has just opened, images made by her husband, the famed photographer and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz. They provide glimpses of a life that's become a legend. But then some say Georgia O'Keeffe's major work was her life, a life of ferocious, even transcendent, American independence. O'Keeffe began about as independently as you could get 80 years ago--an abstract woman artist in an era when both abstraction and women artists were anomalous. The museum's president, Jay Cantor, likes to start with drawings like this one. When Alfred Stieglitz first saw them, he supposedly said--

JAY CANTOR, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum: "Oh, at last, a woman on paper." The meaning is very clear that Stieglitz and his male contemporaries didn't believe a woman could do tough, hard imagery, could really look into the frontiers of abstraction and conquer it. So he was very excited by work like this.

PAUL SOLMAN: O'Keeffe was raised in Prairie, Wisconsin, studied art in Chicago in New York, was teaching art in small town Texas, when she began to develop her own style. She set the scene in a 1977 PBS documentary Perry Miller Adato did for New York's WNET.

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE: My sister and I used to walk out from canyons. And the evening star would come when it was still sunny. It would be still bright daylight, and there would be the evening star sitting up in the sky, which I thought was very exciting, and I began painting the evening star. And I think there are eight of these variations of this that I did at that time.

PAUL SOLMAN: This was back in 1916, when Picasso and Braque were still inventing cubism. Images like these had no precedent in American art, as they attempted to capture the feelings and the image induced, rather than the image, itself. As her friend, Anita Paulitzer, put it in a letter to O'Keeffe, "To live on paper what we're living in our hearts and heads and all the exquisite lines and good spaces and rippingly good colors are only a way of getting rid of these feelings and making them tangible. Meanwhile, Alfred Stieglitz was having feelings of his own.

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE: They photographed me till I was crazy. And he'd be photographing every day. And he started photographing me with glass plates when you had to stay still between three and four minutes. And you'd itch here, you know. You'd want to scratch there. In that three minutes, you could have more itchy spots on you than you can imagine.

PAUL SOLMAN: The O'Keeffe of Adato's documentary, then in her 80's, thought of the O'Keeffe in her 30's as a completely different person. She had come to take for granted what was positively revolutionary back in the early 1900's.

MARIA MORRIS HAMBOURG, Metropolitan Museum of Art: Think about the image of woman at the turn of the century in America.

PAUL SOLMAN: Maria Morris Hambourg is curator of photography at the Met.

MARIA MORRIS HAMBOURG: In the summer, for example, we're talking about August right now, well, let's imagine a woman with a large-brimmed hat to keep the sun off her face, perhaps a high-necked, lace collar, and probably corseted in order to keep this hourglass shape. She might, in fact, have a bustle, a Gibson girl, bows and ribbons. In fact, she was quite a package, all tied up. O'Keeffe presented herself entirely differently, a very enticing, alluring, liberated, modern woman, playing a variety of roles--Eve with her apple, a modern sorceress, sort of a cross-dresser, wearing very mannish clothes, a whole variety of roles. And from that, into Venus Embodied, from that very big, beautiful nude some of the most glorious nudes ever made in any medium.

PAUL SOLMAN: The pictures were first exhibited in 1921.

PAUL SOLMAN: And how were they received?

MARIA MORRIS HAMBOURG: Scandalously. Stieglitz was a middle-aged man and married, and she was in rather obviously undressed situations. It was clear that the relationship between Stieglitz and O'Keeffe was an intimate one, and here it was all over the walls of a Fifth Avenue art gallery.

PAUL SOLMAN: As artist, however, O'Keeffe was in the process of embracing New York.

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE: I think New York is wonderful. It's like a dream. It always makes European cities look like villages to me. I think of the city going up, don't you? Well, it tends to move the sky.

PAUL SOLMAN: So now she's moved to New York, with Stieglitz, living with him, and painting New York pictures.

JAY CANTOR: Well, at this point Stieglitz and O'Keeffe are actually married. O'Keeffe is not only talking to Stieglitz, and bouncing ideas off of him, but she's been enmeshed in a circle of abstract artists, who are very interested in the beat and rhythm of city life, suggested in part by the alternation of lights in the windows, by the folding quality of a light on the clouds, and the whole sort of thrust. The attenuated shape of the canvas, itself, is obviously in response to a feeling in the city, its uprightness, but also a kind of narrow, constricted world that it represented for O'Keeffe. And I think you can see that in the canyon-like image of the city that we have on the other side.

PAUL SOLMAN: On a personal level the buzz of the city was more than she bargained for. Stieglitz was forever holding court, putting a strain on their relationship.

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE: Yes. He had to have people around. And I find people very difficult. And when I couldn't take it, I went in my room and shut the door.

PAUL SOLMAN: In her art she did something else as well. She started painting flowers-- flowers for city folk.

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE: And I thought, now, if I would paint that flower, just that flower, the size it is, nobody would ever look at it. But if I enjoy the flower and I would paint it, I'm going to paint it big so they will have to look at it.

PAUL SOLMAN: Well, people certainly did look, and what many of them saw was fraught with Freudianism. Until her dying day, however, O'Keeffe denied any sexual symbolism.

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE: The people that saw them that way, they were talking about their own self, not about me.

PAUL SOLMAN: Try telling that to Guru Rattan Kar-Khalsa, visiting the O'Keeffe Museum with her daughter.

GURU RATTAN KAR-KHALSA: What I enjoy about her work is so many of them are actually voluptuous, you feel a very feminine voluptuousness. And then over here, bringing this purple--the purple vine and the green vine amidst all this just lush blue, black ripeness, and then you've got these tiny projectiles. So, again, it's kind of like a contrast maybe male and female, detail, and then a more formless substance.

PAUL SOLMAN: O'Keeffe was much influenced by Eastern art. Critics have often commented on her Eastern sensibility. But, in fact, O'Keeffe was heading West, specifically to New Mexico, which she began visiting regularly in 1929.

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE: As soon as I saw it, that was my country, like something that's in the air. It's just different. The sky is different. The stars are different. The wind is different. I shouldn't say too much about this because other people may get interested, and I don't want them interested.

PAUL SOLMAN: She still painted flowers, but gradually they were displaced by the skulls and bones she found in the desert.

ASTA OLIVER, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum: She loved to look at the New Mexico sky through these bones. She also in her book that she wrote in 1976 talked about bones in an interesting way. She said, "The blue and the red of the bone series is a kind of thing that I do that makes me feel I am going off into space, into a way that I like, and that frightens me a little because it is so unlike what anyone else is doing.

PAUL SOLMAN: O'Keeffe spoke later in life of having lived on a knife's edge. Stieglitz cheated on her. She suffered a nervous breakdown. But she persevered and in the 1930's already was an image of self-reliance.

MARIA MORRIS HAMBOURG: The sort of physical self-determination becomes fully apparent And we see an O'Keeffe who was entirely her own person, rather severe, very funny, at the same time not without humor, but very clear about who she was and what she wanted.

PAUL SOLMAN: One thing she wanted was an old Catholic mission in tiny Abecue, New Mexico, her winter home for the last five decades of her life.

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE: I thought that door was something I had to have. I don't know why, but I had to have that door.

PAUL SOLMAN: She had the door and she painted it again and again. It apparently amused her and continues to amuse others.

KERMIT HANSEN: But I love the humor of it. "My Last Door." Now whether that's symbolic of this is my exit, or whether it is that she is saying, yes, I did five other patio doors, and I am attracted to them, but this is my last.

PAUL SOLMAN: Well, who knows what she meant? What we do know is that she loved Abecue, loved her garden, loved the rocks she collected, loved the views of the New Mexico landscape, both those from her house and the ones she saw in expeditions into the landscape, itself.

MIKE WOLSTED: It's just amazing how she seems to capture what's really going on out here.

PAUL SOLMAN: When you say capture, you mean the light, the colors. I mean, is--

MIKE WOLSTED: I would say everything, just the overall feel of it. It's, you know, as I say, just having seen this yesterday in real life and then coming back and seeing it in relief. It's just really--really amazing.

PAUL SOLMAN: By O'Keeffe's 80's Stieglitz was long dead. Her eyesight was failing. O'Keeffe hired a young sculptor, Juan Hamilton, to be her final companion. She was magazine cover famous but still calling her own shots.

JUAN HAMILTON, O'Keeffe Friend: I was in awe of her, and oftentimes I think as a person she was more incredible than as a painter. Her interest in evolving and in learning more, in knowing more was incredible. Her ability to please herself and not to try to please others, oftentimes people came to the door, and she'd say, what can I do for you, and she'd say, well, I just wanted to see you, and her response was, front, side, and back, and she'd turn sideways, turn backwards, and then walk away, and you've seen me.

PAUL SOLMAN: With Hamilton O'Keeffe wrote a book and traveled the world, including a stop in Washington.

JUAN HAMILTON: As we went by the Washington Monument, O'Keeffe looked up at the gradations of light across the monument against the blue sky, and she said to me, "I've always wanted to paint that." She worked with different assistants--not trained artists but gardeners and housekeepers and had her painting books out and had them reading and mixing paint with her-- worked very hard, did nine different examples of this work, which has been liked or not liked by many.

PAUL SOLMAN: To many modern artists it was O'Keeffe's abstractions, both early and late, that so distinguished her. But to many women she meant something more.

MARIA MORRIS HAMBOURG: There are not that many people--if you were growing up in America and you were an artistically minded or independent-minded person who stood out as the kind of figure that--figure that you could admire, look up to, and hope one day to resemble, and O'Keeffe was certainly--for me personally she--she represented that. I ended up being a curator, of course, not being an artist. I didn't have that talent.

PAUL SOLMAN: But she still was--

MARIA MORRIS HAMBOURG: But she stood for it, absolutely, because she took the time, she cared enough to pay attention.

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE: I have been very fortunate, much more fortunate than most people. I don't--for instance, I can imagine myself being a much better painter and nobody paying attention to me at all, but it happens that the things that I've been doing have been in touch with my time so that people have liked it. But I could have been much better and nobody noticed it, much better, I'll say, as a painter. You see, a painter is one thing and a person in a way is another thing.

PAUL SOLMAN: Georgia O'Keeffe died in 1985--age 98. FOCUS - TESTING THE LIMITS

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Now, truth or consequences in cyberspace. Tom Bearden has some background.

TOM BEARDEN: Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97; wear sun screen. That's what author Kurt Vonnegut supposedly told MIT graduates this spring in a commencement address. Trouble is Vonnegut didn't speak at MIT's graduation ceremony and didn't write the words. Columnist Mary Schmich did, in a column that was published in the Chicago Tribune in June. Someone took it, labeled it as a Vonnegut speech, and began circulating it on the Internet, the global computer network. No real harm was done. But it was one more example of how quickly a hoax can spread around the world on the net. Last year, former Kennedy Press Secretary Pierre Salinger made headlines when he claimed to have discovered proof that TWA Flight 800 had been accidentally shot down by a missile fired from a U.S. Naval vessel.

PIERRE SALINGER, Former Kennedy Press Secretary: [November 1996) And despite Navy statements that they had nothing to do with the TWA 800 crash, we have strong evidence that they are wrong.

TOM BEARDEN: The document Salinger provided as proof had been circulating for months on the Internet. Government investigators strongly denied the allegation. Even so, dozens of theories about that crash continue to circulate on the web.

TED PINKOWITZ, E-Central: An article in the British newspaper, the Sunday Express, the 13th of July has a report on another possible theory of the TWA 800 disaster, the theory is that some space debris hit the 747.

TOM BEARDEN: Ted Pinkowitz is the president of E-Central, an Internet provider service in Denver. He was reading a message posted in a news group--which is one of the ways that information and misinformation travels on the Internet. There are over 20,000 news groups.

TED PINKOWITZ: A news group is a bulletin board area where people can post messages, post ideas, post questions. And then people respond to that. People that use news groups usually use them fairly frequently, and they are checking these news groups on a daily or every-other-day basis, so as soon as something is hit, not only will it propagate through news groups, but people will then E-mail friends and people that have like interests and begin to spread the word rather quickly.

TOM BEARDEN: Many Internet users have address books which can contain hundreds of names. They can be used to send electronic messages to large numbers of people with a single click of a mouse. The same technique can be used to forward a message-- like the Vonnegut speech. - creating an avalanche of electronic mail. Another way misinformation can be distributed is on a web page. Virtually anyone can set up a web site to spread their own ideas and conspiracy sites abound. The topics range from O. J. Simpson to the Oklahoma City bombing, to the Kennedy assassination.

TED PINKOWITZ: People with all sorts of voices--no matter how outlandish they are--have a place where they can publish and be accessed by millions of people. Never before has that ability been available.

TOM BEARDEN: Without the filter of the traditional press?

TED PINKOWITZ: Exactly. You don't have to print anything, and you don't have to have a filter of the traditional press saying, we think this is news, we don't think this is news. You can put anything out there and let's let the general public decide whether or not it's significant, important or worth doing something about.

TOM BEARDEN: A court may eventually decide whether an item in "The Drudge Report" web site is worth doing something about. Recently that web site--which is devoted to news and gossip- -reported there were allegations of spousal abuse against White House Aide Sidney Blumenthal. Matt Drudge, who had earlier boasted in a "Time" Magazine profile that information in his column was "80-percent accurate", quickly withdrew the allegation. But Blumenthal and his wife have filed a defamation suit against the Drudge Report and against American OnLine, one of the Internet services that carried the report. Incidents like these have led some people to call for new laws to address Internet libel and for increased protection for intellectual property.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: We get three perspectives now. Floyd Abrams is a constitutional lawyer who represented the "New York Times" in the "Pentagon Papers" case. Daniel Weitzner is the deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a not-for- profit organization working on Internet privacy and First Amendment issues. And Steve Geimann is president of the Society of Professional Journalists. Thank you all for being with us. Mr. Abrams, how is the defamation case against Matthew Drudge different from what it would be if he wrote for a newspaper or was on television?

FLOYD ABRAMS, Constitutional Lawyer: Well, as against him, it's not different. He's subject to the same rules as everyone else. He doesn't get any more protection, or any less protection because he's speaking for himself, on his own behalf, rather than in a newspaper, or the like. For American OnLine it may very well be different. For one thing, Congress has passed a law which says that when an on-line service carries information disseminated by other people that they're exempt from state libel law. So American OnLine may not be liable at all or even potentially liable even if he is.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Put this in a broader context for us, Mr. Abrams. How is this- -what are the implications for the Internet of this?

FLOYD ABRAMS: Well, I think in a few ways there are serious implications; first, people who use the Net, people who have web sites, people who communicate on the web really have to understand that they don't live in a law-free world simply because they're communicating on the Net. If we have libel law, if libel law is constitutional, it will apply to them too. Second, I think, at its broadest people have to understand that there is not only more freedom, more information, and more participation by more people on the Net than any other way really in the history of the world; there's also more irresponsible information, more falsehoods, less that you can be sure of because you don't have an editing process; you don't have a newsroom, you don't have someone calling that--Mr. Drudge has got to call and say, you know, we just don't have it, we don't have enough information. Mr. Drudge may feel anything is enough so long as it's interesting, no responsible newsroom does, and I think it's a good thing that Mr. Drudge is at least judged by the same standards that any journalist or any one of the rest of us would be.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Weitzner, do you think that different people and groups that are working on the Internet now are getting that message?

DANIEL WEITZNER, Center for Democracy and Technology: Well, I am somewhat chastened by Mr. Abrams' advice, that, indeed, there is a law out there. We know there's law out there. But I think this is a serious matter for Internet users because, as they saying goes, on the Internet everyone is a publisher. I think that what that means is that everyone's the potential target of a libel suit. And when we look at mass media libel law and we see that the average award is in the millions or tens of millions of dollars and legal fees are who knows what, that's a disturbing prospect, I think, for Internet users that something that we might say out there in cyberspace on some news group on our web site could be subject to the relatively intensive scrutiny of the legal process. I guess I think that the more serious issue, though, that's raised by the various cases in the setup piece by this AOL case is that, indeed, Internet users are now challenged to figure out what they should trust and what they shouldn't. And I frankly think that's a cultural process for the Internet to go through. I don't think that that's a process that will first and foremost be addressed in the legal system. I think it's something that's being addressed today in the Internet community and there are lots of examples of that, of how we establish trust and reputation. And my hope is that process can continue--it's an important process--without too many more very large lawsuits like this.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Give me one example.

DANIEL WEITZNER: Well, the Kurt Vonnegut case is interesting. A good friend of mine handed me a printed copy of that posting. I didn't know where it came from. And I read it, and I thought it was interesting. And he told me where it came from but I read it with half- -with amusement and half wondering what this was and where did it come from--because it didn't come from a source that I trust on the Internet. I trust my friend, but he didn't know where it came from. So I think we're all learning how to decide what to trust.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Geimann, look at this as a professional journalist for a moment. Is the Internet, as you've said--you've used these words--like street corner gossip--or does it need to start adopting guidelines and ethical standards and the sorts of things that journalists have developed over the years?

STEVE GEIMANN, Society of Professional Journalists: I think Daniel is exactly right, that one of the things that we're learning about this new technology is it puts people in a lot of places very quickly. It allows us to go places we could not get to on our feet, or could not get to by a phone call. We now can read what other peoplethink. We can share information instantaneously, no matter where we are at any given time of the day or night, and that has led some people to believe that everything they read because it's in print is true, is truthful. I think we have to start asking ourselves as individuals, what's the source of the information, is it reliable, is it dependable, does it have a trust factor? Journalists too have to make that determination. When we go about reporting stories and we use the Internet as a supplemental tool to the standard shoe leather and phone calls, and checking records, we have to ask ourselves, what's the source of the information, why is this information being presented to me as a journalist. There's no difference in the way a reporter goes about responsibly, professionally asking questions, making sure that the information he gets is accurate, is fair, and it's balanced. Because it's on the Internet doesn't absolve us of that responsibility to make those decisions, to make that determination before we print, publish, or in this case post information to the Internet.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Abrams, you have written that--I read a law journal article in which you said that you go to journalists and you say you're going to be regulated to the extent that you're not responsible. But you said you can't really say that to the Internet. Explain what you meant by that.

FLOYD ABRAMS: Well, what I meant is that there will inevitably be a level of irresponsibility on the Internet, so long as it is free, indeed, so long as it is as free as we would like it to be, so long as it's as free as the Supreme Court has indicated it will be. The Internet is likely to remain essentially unregulated by government. And lawyers like me are not going to be able to get up in court, representing Internet users and say, in effect, look, Judge, trust us. You know, we work hard to get our stories right. We have a lot of editors; we do this; we do that; we check. You don't know all the stuff we know that we don't put on the air. I can say that for a broadcaster. I couldn't say that for Mr. Drudge. I couldn't say that, presumably, for a lot of people who use the Net. Now, I shouldn't have to say that, but the fact remains that it changes the dynamics of the way law is going to be created if the defense of the speech cannot include a level of reassurance that even if more, rather than less, speech is allowed things will still be okay.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Does that lead you to any conclusions about anything that should happen, Mr. Abrams?

FLOYD ABRAMS: Look, I don't think we can demand, even ask, of everybody that's got a web site that he or she ought to go out and act like a mini journalist before he or she says anything, but I do think people have got to understand that when they're speaking to tens, hundreds, thousands, and more people, when they're communicating with them, it is not like making a phone call across the street to a friend, and that you do take on some greater responsibilities and some greater risks.

DANIEL WEITZNER: I would actually suggest that there are some assurances that we could provide. I hope we don't have to provide them to a court, but I think we can provide them to the world, that a critical difference between speech on the Internet and speech, for example, in a newspaper or on television, is that speech on the Internet is susceptible to nearly instantaneous response. In preparation for the show I did a little World Wide Web search on Blumenthal and Drudge, and I threw in a few other terms to narrow the search. And whatI came up with right away was not only the original posting and some of the later postings and some of the Washington Post articles, but I also came up with the fact right away that Drudge retracted whatever it was that he said. So I think that there's--and also the fact that Blumenthal was suing him, and that there's some reason to question what Drudge was really saying--question the veracity. So I think that there are a lot of ways that we can have some assurance that this can work out in a positive way, that we can keep speech open, without risking huge unreliability.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Steve Geimann, one solution would have been--and please tell us about this--because it just happened this afternoon--news producers, people from newspapers and television stations could have somehow graded what's on the Internet and said, this is news or this isn't. Explain that effort and what's happened with that.

STEVE GEIMANN: There has been for several months an effort to try to use the software technology that allows people to filter material arriving at their PC. How is that technology going to react with news sites, news content on the web? Internet Content Coalition--a small group of content providers--and software producers--had been talking about this for a while, and it raised a lot of alarms for a lot of professional journalists because we take great exception to anybody trying to regulate, rate, or otherwise impose any kind of restrictions on what it is independent professional journalism does in this country. Late this afternoon they announced after a day-long meeting in New York City that they had chosen to not get involved in applying any sort of rating to any news content on the web, to have an open news arena, if you will. I think that's a good decision. I think that was the wise approach to take at this time. We should not, however, relax our guard that this does away with the problem of trying to rate web sites. There is technology that will allow people, providers, users, Internet service providers, to make these determinations without any involvement on the part of journalists. Responsible, professional journalists have to maintain their vigilance that an independent press in this country prevails in print, in broadcast, and on the web. So the action today basically admitting that they could not come up with any kind of rating I think was a good step, a first step, but we can't let our guard down. The technology is out there. We have to address it.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Abrams, looking at the history, knowing the history of the way that the relationship between law and newspapers and law and television stations has developed, what do you see ahead for the Internet?

FLOYD ABRAMS: Well, the courts take very seriously what level of historical protection we as a people have afforded people in different media. The fact that newspapers, for example, have always gotten the highest level of First Amendment protection has really helped journalists who work for newspapers through the years, and broadcasting, which has gotten a sort of watered down level of protection, unfairly I think, has led to less protection historically. The Internet starts ahead of the game. I mean, we are starting fresh, and we're starting fresh with a new means of communication, which begins at a very high level of legal protection. That's very good. That's very important. But it may also mean that, as we've said, people who run the web, people who have their own web sites, may have to accustom themselves to the fact that this is not just a little chat they're engaged in but something more than that. Maybe they're going to have to say--

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Abrams, I'm going to interrupt you. I'm sorry.

FLOYD ABRAMS: Sure.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: We don't have any time left. But thank you all very much for being with us. ESSAY - ORDINARY THINGS

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Finally tonight, Roger Rosenblatt considers some of his favorite things.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: This is the most predictable time of year, let us enjoy it. From the last weeks of August through the first weeks of September everything that happens has happened before and will happen again. Excellent. So long, Mr. President, have a great vacation. Every President takes off this time of year. Mr. Clinton's Martha's Vineyard was Ronald Reagan's Rancho Del Sielo. Now, Reagan was a man who really knew how to take a vacation, but so was Dwight Eisenhower, who took a 26-day holiday in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1957, and Harry Truman, who spent his leisure time deep sea fishing off Key West. Calvin Coolidge used to take vacations as often as possible. How could they tell? In 1969, Richard Nixon took 31 days off at San Clemente, a modern day record. A turbulent year, 1969. But even the leader of the free world deserves a break. As James Thurber said, "Tis better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all." In any case, it's all predictable, as is the sight of kids going back to school. That's almost as predictable as the mild, little jokes about how glad parents will be to see the kids going back to school. Larger kids will head for college, some of them the last in their families to do so, thus, emptying the nest. Families will take the customary last fling at having a good time, swimming the last swim, grilling and burning the last of the summer's hotdogs, commenting endlessly on the last of the summer peaches, the summer lettuce, the summer corn. People will dream the last of the summer dreams. Forget not to enjoy that inner last fling too. This is the season for dreaming about monumental changes of life and lost or delayed opportunities. What happened to that novel you always had in you? Of course, it's not too late to get it out. Didn't you always intend to become an opera singer? Get out there on the beach and stretch those vocal chords. Your time has come. Wasn't that always the real you, the poet, the architect, ballerina, chef? By mid-September, those might have been reveries will have been swallowed by all but normal "what ises." But for now, seize the daydream. Let all that may be taken for granted be taken for granted. The world is too full of surprises anyway. That's all we ever see--surprises. We expect them. We roll with the sucker punches. Shocking news--a respected sports announcer is accused of living on life's seamier side. Savage and sadistic cops brutalize a man in a station house bathroom. So few surprises are nice ones that the predictable moments become suddenly special. Coleridge said that about the difference between surprise and anticipation. If we were to look at a point of land over which the sun were supposed to rise and the moon rose instead, we'd be disappointed, let down. But give us the sun when it's scheduled to appear, and that's good news, which reminds me, yesterday over the borough of Manhattan in the City of New York, in the United States, on the Northern American continent, a slight variation in the darkened sky occurred at approximately 6:15 AM. Within 15 minutes the sky, which had served as an obscuring bed cover over the city, was seemingly cast off bya giant hand. And its place was a lighter sky. By 6:30, the atmosphere had been thoroughly altered from dark to light because of this one extraordinary rising force. Witnesses said that the event was predictable. But you should have been there. I'm Roger Rosenblatt. RECAP

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Again, the major story of this Thursday, two U.S. peacekeepers were hurt in Northwestern Bosnia while evacuating United Nations police observers mobbed by feuding Serbs. We'll see you on-line and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Elizabeth Farnsworth. Thank you and good night.